John Shakespeare |
Alan Moir |
David Rowe |
Cathy Wilcox |
This blog is open to any who wish to comment on Australian society, the state of the environment or political shenanigans at Federal, State and Local Government level.
A tale of two former leaders
Scott John Morrison & Donald John Trump at the height of their political careers before the fall into public disgrace and infamy
Getty Image circa Sept. 2019 As both men are seen in Australia in July 2023 |
Blameless Cathy Wilcox |
In a pickle Jon Shakespeare |
The following is a video of Scott John Morrison's Members Statement of 31 July 2023 on the floor of the Australian House of Representatives......
Video supplied
During his Member's Statement (Hansard 31.07.23 at 16:10, p.83) Morrison asserted in part:
- “I do, however, completely reject the commission's adverse findings in the published report regarding my own role as Minister for Social Services between December 2014 and September 2015 as disproportionate, wrong, unsubstantiated and contradicted by clear evidence presented to the commission. As Minister for Social Services I played no role and had no responsibility in the operation or administration of the robodebt scheme.”
- “In relation to the commission's finding regarding untrue evidence, I also reject this as unsubstantiated, speculative, and wrong.”
- “Finally, the commission's allegation that pressure was applied to department officials that prevented their giving frank advice is wrong, unsubstantiated and absurd….How could I have pressured officials into developing such proposals while serving in another portfolio?”
- “Throughout my service in numerous portfolios over almost nine years I enjoyed positive, respectful and professional relationships with Public Service officials at all times, and there is no evidence before the commission to the contrary. While acknowledging the regrettable—again, the regrettable—unintended consequences and impacts of the scheme on individuals and families, I do however completely reject each of the adverse findings against me in the commission's report as unfounded and wrong.”
- “The latest attacks on my character by the government in relation to this report is just a further attempt by the government following my departure from office to discredit me and my service to our country during one of the most difficult periods our country has faced since the Second World War. This campaign of political lynching has once again included the weaponisation of a quasi-legal process to launder the government's political vindictiveness. They need to move on.”
This is the second time Scott Morrison has risen to his feet in
the House of Representatives to self-servingly defend his
personal politically indefensible actions.
That first time he was defending the fact that as then Prime Minister of Australia (24.8.2018 to 23.5.2022) and Minister for the Public Service (29.5.2019 to 8.10.2021) he secretly appointed himself to five additional key ministries, beginning this portfolio grab in March 2020:
Covert actions which on completion of a formal independent inquiry by Honourable Virginia Bell AC which found:
"As the Solicitor-General concluded, the principles of responsible government were “fundamentally undermined” because Mr Morrison was not “responsible” to the Parliament, and through the Parliament to the electors, for the departments he was appointed to administer.
Finally, the lack of disclosure of the appointments to the public was apt to undermine public confidence in government. Once the appointments became known, the secrecy with which they had been surrounded was corrosive of trust in government."
caused the House of Representatives on 31 November 2022
by a vote of 80 to 56 to censure him with these words:
“Therefore [the house] censures the member for Cook for failing to disclose the appointments to the House of Representatives, the Australian people and the cabinet, which undermined responsible government and eroded public trust in Australia’s democracy.”
At the moment he rose to his feet to make his 31 July 2023 statement to the House the Liberal MP for Cook appeared literally friendless, with very few members of parliament remaining in or returning to the Chamber to hear him speak.
IMAGE: Snapshot via @Terrytoo69, Twitter, 1 August 2023 However, lest anyone imagine Scott Morrison deserves pity, I give the last words in this post to..... |
Mr Morrison, you are a bottomless well of self-pity with not a drop of mercy for all the real victims of Robodebt pic.twitter.com/tdDiK6O6TK
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) August 1, 2023
Liberal Opposition backbench MP for Cook & former prime minister Scott Morrison does not appear to have returned to Australia as yet.
Having departed this country around 16-18 June 2023 and, studiously remained overseas for the tabling and publication of the damning Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme, he is running out of reasons to continue to avoid his own and the national electorate in his 5th week of a holiday jaunt.
Both houses of parliament resume sitting on Monday 31 July so perhaps he will have found some courage tucked away along with a souvenir from the Acropolis in a pocket of his suitcase and will be back in Canberra by then.
A reminder of how unfondly he has been regarded for many years now.....
"Tell him" was a big hit for The Exciters in the 60s. Now I've just parodied it coz i really really think we should all contact the PMO and tell him exactly what we think of him. Write, email, call, txt. . Really. . Tell him. Tell him right now ...🤣 sorry Exciters pic.twitter.com/1RQ6yX3hr7
— Glenno and Ruben (@mad6duck) October 31, 2021
On 23 December 2014 the Liberal MP for Cook Scott ‘Stop The Boats’ Morrison moved ministerial portfolios – ceasing to be the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (a first ministerial position he had held for 15 months & 4 days) and becoming the Minister for Social Services.
Twenty-nine days later in the parliamentary recess he took part in a Sky News radio interview that contains this exchange:
RICHARDSON: You were not put in there to be a pussycat. You are in there to do some hard things. You would not have been put there otherwise. All the predictions were you were going to defence. I wouldn’t have put you in defence if I was the boss, I think he has been sensible doing this and I think this or health would have been where I had shoved you because you have got to go where there are jobs to be done and messages to be sold. Who are you going to crackdown on because a bloke like you is not going to sit there and do nothing. Does that mean that anyone on the dole has got to look out?
MINISTER MORRISON: Anyone who is trying to rip it off does. Anyone who is trying to rip off the welfare system because every benefit paid is paid for by another taxpayer. On average an Australian who works is working a whole month to pay for someone else’s benefits. There are a broad range of people that need and deserve our support whether those on the aged pension who have worked hard all their life and had a clear deal as they went through life that if they worked hard there would be an age pension at the other end. Now I think retirement incomes have changed a lot since then for people like me when I come to retire and my generation but that said all the way to those who have real disabilities, those who are looking after people as carers and I think Australians generally are quite happy to have a system that helps people who are genuinely in need and deserve our support. But what they won’t cop just like they won’t cop people coming on boats, they are not going to cop people who are going to rort that system. So there does need to be a strong welfare cop on the beat and I will certainly be looking to do that but I will be doing that because I want to make sure this system helps the people who most need it……
RICHARDSON: I really wish you all the best and it was always a problem for me and I always worried about it but there aren’t as you know in government once you get there not every problem is easy to solve. Having covered that, I want to take you more into general politics because I always like to do that with you because as I said you are the tough guy, but you also know which way is up, I think you know the electorate pretty well. I don’t think you live in some on high castle I think you have been pretty good at what you do. Now, are you on this economic review committee, this small sub-committee of cabinet? You are more than a third of the budget, are you on it?
MINISTER MORRISON: Yes I have joined the ERC, that’s right the Expenditure Review Committee. I was previously on the National Security Committee in my previous portfolio and obviously Peter Dutton has taken that on he has done a great job particularly over this last week also dealing with the issues on Manus, but I have taken his place on the ERC and he has taken mine on the NSC….
RICHARDSON: I was on the ERC for a year or two and I remember asking to get off because it takes up an enormous amount of time and if you are a busy Minister it is an enormous position and you know I guess when a third of the budget is yours you have to be there. Now what about these leaks from it, I can recall leaks from our Cabinet back in the Hawke/Keating days but not from the Expenditure Review Committee that is a new thing, you must be pretty disturbed by that.
MINISTER MORRISON: Well look I have only seen the press reports about this Graham and it is important the government remains focussed on the job within ERC and that is to get the budget under control and make sure we have got an economic programme that grows the economy. That is what I am focussed on, I believe that is what the team is focussed on and we will be meeting again soon and we will just get on with the job of preparing for the next budget. We have got matters outstanding from the last budget that are held up in the Senate, that is frustrating. We are going to have to take a good look at quite a number of those measures both in the context of what is currently before the Senate as well as what we seek to recast for the budget that is coming forward particularly in my own area of responsibility. A big area there is going to be child care.
[my yellow highlighting]
Morrison's remarks were immediately picked up by print and online newspapers.
Morrison also alluded to the term “welfare cop” on the floor of the House of Representative on 17 June 2015 when speaking to Appropriations Bill No1 2015-16:
I am pleased to be speaking on the Human Services budget consideration in detail and I acknowledge the fine work of my colleague Senator the Hon. Marise Payne, who is the minister responsible for these areas. Our welfare system, as I was mentioning in the previous discussion, must respect those who pay for it—that is, the taxpayers. Eight out of 10 income taxpayers are required to go to work every day to pay for our welfare system and they deserve two things in particular when it comes to the Human Services portfolio: that the welfare measures will be delivered with integrity, and that they will be delivered with efficiency. That is what they expect. More broadly, as a question of policy in relation to the previous discussion, it must help those who are most in need. In this budget, this government has committed to some significant initiatives that will improve not only the integrity of the welfare payment system and broader payment system for the government and the Human Services portfolio but also its efficiency.
We have said from day one in this portfolio that we have no tolerance whatsoever for those who rort the system. It is crucial that we have a strong welfare cop on the beat, and this budget contains significant measures to boost fraud investigation and compliance activities. Australians must have confidence in the system, just as they must have confidence that the safety net will be there for those who really need it. We have already made progress on welfare integrity, such as having Australian government contracted doctors assess new claims for the DSP to achieve consistency and equity across the country. We have tightened up portability arrangements, so people cannot just head off overseas for as long as they like and continue to pick up the DSP. You do not get an entitlement to holiday pay when you are on the DSP. In 2013-14 the Department of Human Services investigated 411 people for dishonestly claiming DSP, which resulted in $9.5 million in raised debts. We have put more than $200 million in this budget into strengthening our compliance and we have delivered on our promise to have a tougher cop on the beat for welfare. The government is committed to protecting the integrity of the welfare system.
We are also committed to innovation in service delivery. That is why we are replacing the decades-old welfare payment IT system, which too many governments have kicked down the road for too long. Investing in a new system will boost efficiencies and help advance welfare reforms as well as lessen the compliance burden on individuals, employers, service providers and, indeed, beneficiaries.
I commend the Human Services minister and all members who seek to participate in this debate. Above all, in the Human Services portfolio it is all about implementation. It is all about connecting the intent of policy with the beneficiaries of those policies. That has to be done with integrity and it has to be done with efficiency, and I commend Minister Payne for the outstanding job she has been doing in delivering on both of those objectives and providing a clear path for reform for the way forward.
[my yellow highlighting]
That term continued to be alluded to in the mainstream media over the 32 weeks Morrison held the Social Services portfolio. In articles with headlines such as:
Welfare cop to hunt cheats
AFP welfare cop to target cheats
Welfare cop to stop the fraud
Welfare cop to stop dole, pension rorts
Welfare cops now on patrol
Welfare warning
Cop that, dole cheats
Cracking down on disability cheaters
Senior Cop In Benefit Blitz
Disability pensioner numbers dive as Morrison gets tough
It took another 6 years and 9 a bit months before the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme began to reveal the path that was taken which allowed Morrison's toxic attitude to people he saw as 'the other' to develop into entire government departments and agencies colluding in his personal war on the poor and vulnerable.
The Saturday Paper, 11 March 2023:
The crucial moment came in a radio interview. Scott Morrison was a month into his portfolio as minister for Social Services when he announced a crackdown on welfare. This set off a chain of events still being resolved today. From the outset, robo-debt was the expression of a political desire.
By 2pm that same day, January 22, 2015, Department of Human Services deputy secretary Malisa Golightly had emailed a link of the full interview to her boss, Kathryn Campbell.
In the witness box at the robo-debt royal commission this week, Campbell agreed Morrison’s statement was “significant” because it indicated the direction he intended to take the portfolio.
Ten days later, the then Human Services minister, Marise Payne, in a meeting with Campbell, made an entry in her notebook that indicated they had discussed this welfare crackdown. Her notes record a decisive observation: “What can we do w/o having to legislate?”
This, perhaps, is the original sin of the debt recovery program known as robo-debt. The desire to go after welfare recipients for “easy” budget savings was to be done without new laws and this absence of new laws would mean the fundamental welfare assessment changes in what would become robo-debt could never be legal.
The Department of Social Services was already aware of an automatic pay-as-you-go (PAYG) “clean-up” proposal that had risen from the bowels of DHS to the most senior people. It had already declared it, with internal legal advice, to be unlawful in late 2014. DSS advised as much in an executive minute that went to Morrison on February 12, 2015, which listed a range of options. He circled “pursue”. And that was that.
Everything that followed this moment can be seen through the light of the panic of highly paid and “responsive” public servants, morphed into political servants by their own considerable ambition, willing to ignore or actively cover-up a program that stalked and tricked vulnerable people by the hundreds of thousands into paying back debts they never owed.....
Read journalist & author Rick Morton's full article here.
Hi! My name is Boy. I'm a male bi-coloured tabby cat. Ever since I discovered that Malcolm Turnbull's dogs were allowed to blog, I have been pestering Clarencegirl to allow me a small space on North Coast Voices.
A false flag musing: I have noticed one particular voice on Facebook which is Pollyanna-positive on the subject of the Port of Yamba becoming a designated cruise ship destination. What this gentleman doesn’t disclose is that, as a principal of Middle Star Pty Ltd, he could be thought to have a potential pecuniary interest due to the fact that this corporation (which has had an office in Grafton since 2012) provides consultancy services and tourism business development services.
A religion & local government musing: On 11 October 2017 Clarence Valley Council has the Church of Jesus Christ Development Fund Inc in Sutherland Local Court No. 6 for a small claims hearing. It would appear that there may be a little issue in rendering unto Caesar. On 19 September 2017 an ordained minister of a religion (which was named by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in relation to 40 instances of historical child sexual abuse on the NSW North Coast) read the Opening Prayer at Council’s ordinary monthly meeting. Earlier in the year an ordained minister (from a church network alleged to have supported an overseas orphanage closed because of child abuse claims in 2013) read the Opening Prayer and an ordained minister (belonging to yet another church network accused of ignoring child sexual abuse in the US and racism in South Africa) read the Opening Prayer at yet another ordinary monthly meeting. Nice one councillors - you are covering yourselves with glory!
An investigative musing: Newcastle Herald, 12 August 2017: The state’s corruption watchdog has been asked to investigate the finances of the Awabakal Aboriginal Local Land Council, less than 12 months after the troubled organisation was placed into administration by the state government. The Newcastle Herald understands accounting firm PKF Lawler made the decision to refer the land council to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after discovering a number of irregularities during an audit of its financial statements. The results of the audit were recently presented to a meeting of Awabakal members. Administrator Terry Lawler did not respond when contacted by the Herald and a PKF Lawler spokesperson said it was unable to comment on the matter. Given the intricate web of company relationships that existed with at least one former board member it is not outside the realms of possibility that, if ICAC accepts this referral, then United Land Councils Limited (registered New Zealand) and United First Peoples Syndications Pty Ltd(registered Australia) might be interviewed. North Coast Voices readers will remember that on 15 August 2015 representatives of these two companied gave evidence before NSW Legislative Council General Purpose Standing Committee No. 6 INQUIRY INTO CROWN LAND. This evidence included advocating for a Yamba mega port.
A Nationals musing: Word around the traps is that NSW Nats MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis has been talking up the notion of cruise ships visiting the Clarence River estuary. Fair dinkum! That man can be guaranteed to run with any bad idea put to him. I'm sure one or more cruise ships moored in the main navigation channel on a regular basis for one, two or three days is something other regular river users will really welcome. *pause for appreciation of irony* The draft of the smallest of the smaller cruise vessels is 3 metres and it would only stay safely afloat in that channel. Even the Yamba-Iluka ferry has been known to get momentarily stuck in silt/sand from time to time in Yamba Bay and even a very small cruise ship wouldn't be able to safely enter and exit Iluka Bay. You can bet your bottom dollar operators of cruise lines would soon be calling for dredging at the approach to the river mouth - and you know how well that goes down with the local residents.
A local councils musing: Which Northern Rivers council is on a low-key NSW Office of Local Government watch list courtesy of feet dragging by a past general manager?
A serial pest musing: I'm sure the Clarence Valley was thrilled to find that a well-known fantasist is active once again in the wee small hours of the morning treading a well-worn path of accusations involving police, local business owners and others.
An investigative musing: Which NSW North Coast council is batting to have the longest running code of conduct complaint investigation on record?
A fun fact musing: An estimated 24,000 whales migrated along the NSW coastline in 2016 according to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the migration period is getting longer.
A which bank? musing: Despite a net profit last year of $9,227 million the Commonwealth Bank still insists on paying below Centrelink deeming rates interest on money held in Pensioner Security Accounts. One local wag says he’s waiting for the first bill from the bank charging him for the privilege of keeping his pension dollars at that bank.
A Daily Examiner musing: Just when you thought this newspaper could sink no lower under News Corp management, it continues to give column space to Andrew Bolt.
A thought to ponder musing: In case of bushfire or flood - do you have an emergency evacuation plan for the family pet?
An adoption musing: Every week on the NSW North Coast a number of cats and dogs find themselves without a home. If you want to do your bit and give one bundle of joy a new family, contact Happy Paws on 0419 404 766 or your local council pound.